arXiv Machine Learning

Faster Query-Key Learning Sharpens Attention in Self-Attention Models

arXiv:2608. 06776v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: A standard self-attention layer consists of two interacting circuits: the query-key circuit that governs attention allocation, and the output-value circuit that maps attended representations to predictions.

arXiv AI
Sep 21

Attention-Aware Routing: Coupling Routing and Attention in MoEs

Attention-Aware Routing (AAR) augments the router in Mixture-of-Experts language models with temporal and spectral features derived from a sliding window of attention weights, thereby separating contextual information from the token’s hidden state. By keeping the base transformer frozen and training only routing parameters, AAR achieves a +3.37‑point improvement on GSM8K over a routing‑only baseline and demonstrates that routing changes propagate through the residual stream to reshape attention without directly updating the attention mechanism. The method also reduces long diverging generations, shows depth‑sensitivity affecting retrieval versus reasoning, and offers a controlled probe of routing‑relevant information across layers.

By Despoina Kosmopoulou, Anastasios Tsetsilas, Efthymios Georgiou, Giannis Karamanolakis, Swastik Roy, Alexandros Potamianos
arXiv AI
Sep 16

QueryFormer: Winning Solution for KDD Cup 2026 Tencent UniRec Challenge

QueryFormer is a unified architecture designed for post‑click conversion rate prediction, addressing both feature interactions and sequential user behaviors. It introduces a stackable field–sequence block that generates query tokens via cross‑attention and packs sequence queries into shared‑parameter attention, improving efficiency and accuracy. The model won first place in the KDD Cup 2026 Tencent UniRec Challenge Industrial Track with an AUC of 0.83254, and scaling studies show that increasing view width slightly boosts validation AUC while maintaining low latency.

By Yuanzhe Zhou, Zhaoyang Zeng
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 24

Attention Routing Stabilizes Early: Working-Set Inference for Recurrent Language Models

The paper investigates how attention dynamics evolve across recurrent depth in language models, finding that attention support stabilizes early while hidden states and outputs take longer. It proposes WISE, a training‑free method that uses full attention in early steps and then reuses the discovered sparse working set for later steps, preserving performance on multi‑hop QA tasks. Experiments show that WISE maintains quality up to 2K context, offers measurable speedups, and highlights the importance of recurrent discovery of attention support.

By Ke Wan, Chen Chen
arXiv Machine Learning
4d ago

On State Reduction in Linear Attention

arXiv:2602.04852v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Linear attention offers a computationally efficient yet expressive alternative to softmax attention. However, recent empirical results indicate tha...

By Philipp Nazari, T. Konstantin Rusch